XHTML2 reforms and link stammer

** Summary

With the capabilities proposed for XHTML2, we may just be able to come up with
coding techniques that cure a long-standing problem with redundant 
entries in the
tabbing sequence or list-of-links view.

Where in HTML4 we used to write:

<li>
   <a href="URI_forSameDestination">
     <img alt="shortLinkText" src="URI_for_image">
   </a>
  longer including short
   <a href="URI_forSameDestination">
     LinkText</a>
</li>

One could perhaps in XHMTL2 write

<li href="URI_forSameDestination">
   <span src="URI_for_image" role="button">
     shortLinkText:</span>
   longer including short
   <span role=button>
      LinkText
   </span>
</li>

This would give a longer content to the list-of-links entry while 
preserving the two
smaller clickable regions in the rendered content.  The content 
styled to attract
clicks would be limited to the 'button' content but the processing of the event
would be caught at the common containing de-facto hyperlink encoded by the
list item 'li' element with an href attribute.

** Background:

Improving the API connection:

One of the current areas of work in W3C is working to improve the communication
between web pages and access APIs.

Web pages have become interactive documents through the use of scripting.

Access APIs[1] have already addressed this client-side behavior in 
terms of concepts
of 'state' and 'role' properties on elements of and interactive display region.

The HTML WG, with some help from the Protocols and Formats Working Group,
is working to align the HTML re-engineering that is going to 
XHTML2[2] so that the
DOM will contain the right information in a way that is readily bound 
to the access
APIs on various host platforms.

Link stammer[3] is a long-standing and notorious problem:

We have talked before about how it is dysfunctional that when a hyperlink to
another webpage is presented visually as both an icon and as a text phrase
embedded in a text list item, this gets treated as two independent hyperlinks
and the tab order or list-of-links view contains two completely 
redundant items.
This wastes time in scanning through the links and makes it hard to mentally
track your place in the list of links because you could be on the first of one,
the first of two, the second of two, and it's not clear when you move forward
or back if you will get to something different or a repeat of where you are
at the moment.



[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG10/guidelines.html#gl-accessible-interface
[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-tech-comments/2001May/thread.html#0

Received on Sunday, 25 July 2004 13:01:11 UTC